It’s my new obsession, analyzing the story arcs, pacing and plotting in everything from books to TV shows to commercials.
It’s become the new game: Plot-Point Bingo. You call out the various stages as, or before, they unfild: turning point one, turning point two, death of the mentor, all-is-lost. But it kind of annoys people if we play the game in a theater-screening.
Modern adaptation’s of The Hero’s Journey are staples of novel and screen-writing structure, embedded in writing courses everywhere. Why? Because they work.
Arcs, Pacing and Plotting Matter
The human desire for story seems hardwired to certain mythic structures and tropes. The conquering hero battled adversity through two fails and a success. The all-is-lost moment lands right before the finale. Readers expect that emotional rise and fall as part of the thrill ride that contains slow-fast sequences on the way to the climax.
Story can go too slow, or go too fast. You can skip stages in the main character’s emotional response to events. You can break the entire Campbell Monomyth. Just don’t expect five-star reviews. It underpins everything from Pride & Prejudice to Bridget Jones, The Life of Pi to Star Wars.
“It is a truth universally acknowledged, that an orphaned wannabe-space-wizard farm-boy in possession of two annoying robots, an elderly mentor, and an amoral sidekick must be in want of a light-saber…”
The Perfect combination
George Lucas leaned into Campbell’s hero’s journey using character archetypes. Jane Austen latched onto rising and falling action, but always presented flawed characters in the opening chapter.
Without this, both story and character arcs fall flat. No amount of plot-chicanery and jaw-dropping action can make up for a satisfying character and plot arc. That’s why Glass Onion and Transformers present endless empty spectacle but Jane Austen and Agatha Christie never go out of print.
Character without plot to advance an arc of change is just arty moodling. Repeated action set-pieces without relatable rooting characters become dull and meaningless.
The perfect combination of story arcs, pacing and plotting elevates old established genres, tropes and ideas. From disposable time-fillers they become all-time classics.
This is the trouble with Rings of Power. Plotting doesn’t work, pacing jolts from one scene to the next and nobody has a proper character arc.